FullReads

“It was awful hard on you, Wesley,” said Robbins gently.

“I suppose it wasn’t nothing to what some men have suffered. There was poor Tommy Walker, give up his farm when it was foreclosed–thought he had to–and went off tramping to Kansas City, and after he’d tramped a week there, looking for a job, give it up and jumped into the river. And you know how old man Osgood killed himself, honest a old man as ever lived; always kept his machines under cover, too; he couldn’t stand it. They found it harder–and lots more, too; but I’ve found it hard enough. And I know I’d shoot that sneaking, sneering young Shylock, and not mind it near so much as I minded killing poor Sport.”

“I don’t know but we’d all better quit,” said the younger man with a sigh. “This isn’t a living country. Three years of drought would break any country up. It’s not meant to live in. We had a fair crop this year, but it’s so low; and freights, though they’re lower, are pretty high. I don’t see any way out of it. And I declare I think if we run this young fellow off we’ll only get a bad name for the place.”

“I don’t care for bad names,” said the other sullenly. “I got a wife and three children; I was foreclosed a year ago–so’s you, so’s a lot of the boys; we’re at the end of our string now–legally. So what did we say? We said we didn’t care, was it legal or illegal; that laws was made to skin the poor man; and we elected a sheriff we could depend on not to enforce the laws, and we druv off the bloodsuckers they sent out here. They say one feller was killed. I don’t know. Guess that’s one of Doc Russell’s stories. The boys talk a lot about the cause of all this here trouble, and how we’re going to have a revolution, and how referendum and initiendum will help, and how free silver will help–I guess, myself, a little more rain three years ago when corn was up would have helped more’n anything–and they talk how they’re fighting the battles of the poor man, and the Eastern bloodsuckers has ruined us, and the Shylocks are devouring us, and they holler the roof off. I listen to ’em, but I don’t believe ’em any more than you do.”

“But,” interrupted the other man eagerly, “I voted with the people’s party–“

“Of course you did. We was going to be unanimous, and you dass’n’t stand out; but you didn’t believe in it. Me neither. I ain’t makin’ any pretense, but I’ll tell you it’s jest here–I’m down to bed-rock. If I let my farm be took away and my stock, what’s going to become of my wife and children? You can call it stealing, or resisting the law, or anything you please, but I’ll kill that feller before I’ll let him turn me out.”

“Don’t you think we can scare him off? Killing’s a nasty word.”

“My father was with John Brown; he helped kill a man. He never lost no sleep about it; I shan’t neither. Look here, Mr. Robbins, I got lots of time to think, winters–lots. Remorse and all them fine feelings you read of, they don’t belong to folks that are way down in the dirt. You got to have something to eat and wear, and not have your stomach sassing you, and you half froze most of the time; when your body is in sech a fix it’s keeping your mind so full there ain’t any show for any other feelings. And look a’ here, there’s worse”–his voice sank. “Why, you git to that pass you ain’t able to feel for your own wife and babies. When this morning Peggy kept hushing the baby, and she was fretting and moaning, and Peggy says to me, couldn’t I git a little crackers in town; maybe the baby could eat them? I didn’t feel nothing ‘cept a numb aching. I kept saying, ‘I’d ‘a’ felt that, once!’ But I didn’t feel it now. And, all of a sudden, it come to me ’twas because I was gitting past feeling–like you do when you’re froze, jest before you die. I read a story once, when I was a little shaver, that kept me awake nights many a time. It was about a Russian nobleman out sleigh-riding with his children, three of ’em, on one of them steppes; and the wolves chased them. The father had a pistol, and he would shoot one of the wolves, and then the cowardly cusses would stop to tear the wounded critter to pieces and eat him, giving the folks in the sleigh a little more time; but every time the distance between the wolves and them when they stopped was a little smaller; but they were getting closer to the town, and they could see the lights. So the father, he kept on shooting, until the wolves were jumping up and grabbing at the sleigh, and the last time he shot a wolf he used up his last cartridge; then, when they come after him again, when the lights were nearer, and he knew if he could stop ’em once more he could escape, he–he throwed out one of the children; because it was this way: if he jumped out himself the children were so little they couldn’t drive, and they’d be tipped up, and all three of them lost, so he throwed out the child he loved the best, and they got to town safely; but he went raving crazy. Well, I thought of him, and I said, if baby died there’d be the more chance for the others–“